EVIE
The boat slams sideways, and I’m airborne in the tiny cabin below deck for half a second before Kieran catches me, his arms locking around my waist as my back hits the wall.
Then he’s pressed against me, one hand braced beside my head, the other crushing me to his chest. And even though the world outside is tearing itself apart, all I can focus on is the weight of his body pinning mine to the wood, the heat of his skin bleeding through soaked clothes, and his breath coming fast and ragged against my temple as he refuses to let the ocean have me.
This is the Fury Loop all over again, except this time his heat signature isn’t spiking from desire—it’s spiking from fear.
Every intense emotion in Kieran Cross runs through the same furnace, and whether it’s longing, terror, or the desperate need to keep someone alive, his body responds the same way: by burning.
Wood groans above us. Glass crashes and shatters with a sound like the world is ending. The violence outside becomes rhythmic, and through all of it, Kieran’s arms never loosen.
Hours later, the pitching slows, the roaring fades, and new sounds filter through the silence—water lapping against wood, birds calling in the distance, and wind rustling through leaves.
Kieran’s chest rises and falls against mine, slowing and steadying, although his heat never cools.
I should pull back. I should be assessing, cataloguing, and figuring out where we are and whether everyone survived.
But my body won’t cooperate. Because for the first time since Oliver vanished, the ache behind my ribs has gone quiet. It’s not healed or gone, but it’s buried beneath the steady rhythm of Kieran’s heartbeat against my cheek and the heat of his arms holding the fractured pieces of me together.
Then he’s on the other side of the cabin, cold rushing in where his body used to be, looking at me like I’ve poisoned him.
This is the same performance he gave in the Fury Loop.
One second his body was pressed against mine, burning with desire he couldn’t hide.
The next, he was standing over me with ice in his eyes, delivering a speech about emotional weakness while the evidence of his own weakness was scorched on my hip.
Now, he’s doing it again. Even though he put four feet of distance between us and his expression is carved from stone, his heat signature’s still elevated from holding me. His core hasn’t dropped a single degree, and his pulse hasn’t steadied.
Kieran Cross can ice his expression, but he can’t ice his blood. He never could.
“We need to investigate,” he says, clipped and controlled, even though his body’s telling me the opposite. “Check on the others.”
He doesn’t wait for me to reply. He just opens the door, leaves the cabin, and climbs the ladder to the deck.
I press my palms flat against my thighs and count to ten. My hands are shaking. So, I count to twenty instead, then give up because the counting isn’t helping, and climb up after him.
Other than me and Kieran, the deck’s empty.
The sun’s sinking beneath the horizon, turning the sky shades of orange and gold that would be gorgeous if I trusted anything beautiful right now.
The ship’s drifted into a sheltered cove, rocking gently in calm water like the island reached out and pulled us in.
As for the island… there’s green everywhere, lush and vivid.
It’s the kind of green that doesn’t exist in nature without serious help.
A spring glints past the tree line, clear and musical, and my cracked lips ache at the sound.
Luminescent flowers line the shore with more layers of petals than should be possible, and branches hang heavy with golden fruit that smells sweet enough to make my empty stomach cramp.
Every logical instinct I have is screaming that this is a trap, but every primal instinct wants to eat the fruit and drink from the spring until I burst.
Callie opens the hatch and emerges from below deck, her hair a tangled disaster and her skin sickly pale.
Logan follows with Jade in his arms. She’s pale and limp, her head resting against his shoulder as if she doesn’t have the strength to hold it up on her own.
Kieran moves across the deck, checking the containers we set out for rainwater that survived the storm. His jaw tightens before he speaks.
“The storm knocked everything over.”
Callie kicks an overturned bucket. “Are you kidding? She nearly killed us making that storm, and we couldn’t even catch some water?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Logan’s studying the island, the spring, and the golden fruit hanging from the branches. “This island has fresh water and food.”
He’s right—obviously he’s right. But there are also no structures, and no footprints in the sand.
Kieran walks over to me, his eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that makes my skin flush.
“What are you looking for?” he asks, as if he didn’t just hold me through a hurricane and then rip himself out of my arms like I was giving him frostbite.
“Signs of habitation,” I say, launching into facts to compensate for my failing emotions. “According to the texts, the Lost Islands are all occupied. Circe and her animals, Aeolus and his winds, the sirens and their cliffs, and the cyclops and their sheep, the Land of…”
I trail off as Kieran steps close enough that my heat sensing floods every vein in my body, mapping the warmth of his skin, the rhythm of his pulse, and the elevation in his core temperature.
His eyes are greener here. More vivid. They’re the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen, and I want to fall into them and stay there forever.
He blinks a few times, as if coming out of a trance. “We need to grab the containers that survived the storm,” he says, although his voice is softer than usual, almost hypnotizingly so. “We’ll collect as much food and water as we can carry and bring it back to the ship.”
Callie’s already moving, collecting the containers that didn’t wash overboard.
Logan’s still holding Jade, and when he shifts her in his arms, her head lolls like she doesn’t have the strength to hold it up.
“Jade,” he says, low and urgent. “We’re on land. There’s fresh water and food. You did it—your storm brought us here. You saved us all.”
Her eyelids flutter, but they don’t open.
“Hey.” He adjusts his grip, pulling her closer, ducking his head until his forehead touches hers. “You’re going to be okay. Just focus on my voice. Can you do that?”
She doesn’t respond, but he keeps talking, a low stream of words I can’t make out.
Kieran touches my elbow, burning like a furnace, and the ghost of his body pressed against mine in the cabin is so vivid it hurts.
“We’ll head to the spring first,” he says, and I nod, not trusting my voice as I follow him off the boat and onto the beach.
The sand is warm beneath my boots, vegetation rises before us like a wall of green, and the delicious, sweet smell of the golden fruit intensifies with each step, so tempting that it takes everything in my body to not break survival protocol by reaching out and inhaling an entire piece whole.
The others join us, and we walk in loose formation with Kieran in front, Logan in the middle—still holding Jade as if she weighs nothing—and Callie and me bringing up the rear.
We’re only a few feet into the forest when Callie stops so suddenly that I nearly walk into her.
I follow her gaze to a low-hanging branch off the side of the path, three golden fruits dangling close enough to touch.
She plucks one, brings it to her mouth, and bites down.
“Wait—”
I’m too late. She’s already chewing and going in for a second bite.
Logan’s stopped walking. Kieran’s hand is on his dagger, his body coiled and ready, as if the fruit will turn Callie into a monster.
I count seconds and watch Callie’s face for signs of distress. Pupil dilation. Irregular breathing. Tremors. Confusion.
There’s nothing.
Then, the tension drains out of her shoulders and her lips curve into a peaceful smile I’ve never seen on her face.
“Callie.” I step closer, trying to focus on her instead of on how deliciously tempting the fruit smells now that its juice is exposed to the air. “Do you have any numbness in your mouth? Tingling in your extremities? Difficulty breathing?”
“I feel...” She pauses, tilting her head as if she’s searching for the right word. “Good. I feel good.”
I reach for her wrist, pressing my fingers against her pulse point to check her heart rate. It’s slightly slower than baseline, but that’s normal for Callie, so it’s not concerning. “Do you have any chest pain? Shortness of breath? Visual disturbances?”
“Relax.” Her smile widens. “It’s just fruit.”
But it’s not just fruit. Nothing on these islands is just anything. Circe’s food transformed men into animals, the sirens’ song led sailors to their deaths, and…
The thought scatters as Kieran appears beside me, a piece of golden fruit in his hand.
“Standard field test,” he says, calm and measured. “If we’re going to eat this, we do it properly.”
He sheathes his dagger, slides one of the knives from his forearm holster into his boot, and presses the fruit’s flesh against the exposed skin of his inner wrist.
Nothing happens.
Fifteen minutes later, he lifts the fruit to his mouth and touches it to his lower lip.
The sunset deepens around us. My stomach cramps again, and the smell of the fruit is everywhere, coating my tongue, making it hard to think about anything except how hungry I am.
Fifteen minutes later, he places a small piece on his tongue, and we wait again.
The light fades, birds call in the trees, the spring bubbles nearby, and Jade’s breathing from where Logan’s holding her is shallow, rapid, and wrong.
Finally, Kieran swallows.
“No bitterness, burning, or numbness.” He takes another bite, larger this time, even though protocol says you’re supposed to wait eight hours before eating more. He takes another, and another, and when the fruit’s finished, he picks one from the tree and holds it out to me. “It’s safe.”
My stomach clenches so hard my vision spots.
“You need to eat,” he says, coaxing me now. “You’re running on nothing.”
He’s right. But we need to give it more time before knowing if the fruit’s safe or not. We should get water from the spring first, since that’s the most important thing we need to survive. And according to the texts, abundance in these waters is always a trap, and—
Kieran steps closer. His heat burns through my scanning like a flare in the dark, and his fingers curl around the fruit’s golden flesh, juice dripping slow and thick down his wrist. A drop slides along the inside of his forearm, tracing the path where the tattoo of the anatomical heart sits beneath his pushed-up sleeve, and the way he’s looking at me makes me want to fall into his arms and never leave.
“Open your mouth.”
The command is quiet and low. His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there, dark and heavy-lidded, and my core temperature spikes so fast my own scanning registers it.
My lips part without conscious permission.
“That’s it,” he says, closer now, softer than I’ve ever heard him. “Good girl.”
The words hit me low in my stomach, my scanning whiting out for a full second before stuttering back to life. And then he’s raising the fruit to my lips, and the flesh is soft and warm, the smell filling my head until I can’t think about anything else.
“Bite,” he says, and I do.
The taste explodes across my tongue, and my eyes flutter closed as a soft moan escapes me. The juice is honey and sunshine, and it spreads through my body like warmth, light, and every good thing I’ve ever felt condensed into a single moment.
The thermal map I’ve relied on my entire life vanishes in a heartbeat, and in its place there’s just unfiltered, unmeasured sensation.
Kieran’s heat is against my skin with no numbers or data attached to it, and all I have left is the feeling of him, warm and real in a way my scanning’s never let me experience.
When I open my eyes, he’s watching me as if he’s forgotten every rule he’s ever followed.
“More?” His thumb traces my lower lip, the touch sending another rush of warmth through my body.
I nod, unable to speak as he raises the fruit again, and then I’m taking another bite and another, the sweetness filling me until there’s no room left for anything else.
The last of the sunset paints his face in gold and amber. The green of his eyes is luminous now, and he’s looking at me like I’m the only person in the world who matters.
“Better?” He reaches for my hand, his fingers lacing through mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Yes,” I say, and it comes out soft and dreamy. “I feel…”
I feel everything and nothing. I feel his pulse through his fingertips, and the heat of his palm against mine, and none of it comes with measurements or baselines or data points. For the first time in my life, I can feel without thinking, and it’s more peaceful than I’ve ever imagined.
“I know.” His thumb strokes patterns on my skin that leave tingling trails in their wake. “I feel it too.”
The others have faded into background noise. The birds in the trees, the bubbling of the spring… none of it’s important compared to the solid reality of Kieran Cross standing in front of me, touching me and looking at me like he’s finally stopped fighting the pull between us.
“We should...” I try and fail to remember what we should do. I always have a list, but the place in my brain where the list lives is empty, and I don’t miss it in the slightest.
“Later.” He steps closer, closing the last few inches between us, and the heat of his body against mine makes everything else disappear. “Right now, I just want to be here, with you.”
For the first time in my life, I don’t want to analyze why.
I just want to stay right here, with him, forever.